Imani R. Sims is a poet, author, speculative artist, educator, curator, and cultural worker based in Seattle, Washington. Their creative practice is rooted in a deep belief in the healing power of language, the transformational nuance of the human story, and the liberatory potential of imagination. Through poetry, ritual, installation, and speculative storytelling, Sims explores the intersections of Blackness, queerness, femme identity, spirituality, ancestral memory, and futurity.

A working artist and experienced educator, Sims moves between the classroom, the page, public art, performance, and community-based cultural practice. They are the creator of The Deck of N0NE, an Afrofuturist tarot project and evolving body of work that uses archetype, ritual, storytelling, and collective imagination to explore how communities remember themselves and dream forward. Their curatorial and artistic projects have created spaces for Black artists, writers, and audiences to encounter art as archive, ritual, conversation, and possibility.

Sims holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from Seattle University and has worked across higher education, arts and culture, literary programming, and community learning. Their writing and literary work includes the poetry collections (A)live Heart and Adrienne, with work appearing in F(r)iction, SPOKE, Poetry on Buses, and other publications and anthologies. They are a Lambda Literary Poetry Fellowship alum.

As a university speaker and visiting artist, Sims brings the perspective of a working Black speculative artist into conversation with Black feminist literature, Afrofuturism, cultural studies, and creative practice. Their talks invite students to do more than study imagined futures: they ask what becomes possible when Black people claim the authority to write ourselves into them.